For those who own or manage businesses, work is not simply a job—it is a life style. The decisions they make, the people they deal with, the ideas they have are not confined to a 9 to 5 day. Faced with great demands and responsibilities, the challenges and rewards can be great. The different types of businesspeople that work within society’s framework to make a business successful are the entrepreneur, the professional manager, and the functional specialist.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Mainstream economics uses some simple starting points; it believes that they are the best possible. First is that agents have more wants than they can attain, so that they feel scarcity; in fact, for practical purposes, wants are assumed to be endless. Second, third and fourth are that agents are self-interested, rational, and the best judges of their own well-being. These four assumptions are indeed usually good starting points, rather than starting by assuming that agents are completely fulfilled, altruistic, irrational, and not well-placed to evaluate their own situation. They are not equally good as finishing points. Sometimes good arguments exist for not accepting them.

An assumption that agents are the best judges of their own well being is less questionable for businesspeople and corporations, given the resources they have for analysis. Debate focuses more on consumers. The phrase consumer sovereignty is sometimes read descriptively, to mean that consumers are sovereign, in that procedures are induced via profit-seeking and competition to provide what consumers want. Sometimes it is read normatively, to mean that consumers should be sovereign, their wishes should prevail concerning what is good for them. The normative claim can rest on three different bases: that consumers do make good choices; that the alternative stance is worse – to use someone else’s judgments and estimates of what is good for a person and how good it is; or quite differently, that people have the right to make their own choices and mistakes.

Consumers will not make good choices automatically and unconditionally. Our wants are not simple; for example, some are wants to not to have other wants (such as the desire to smoke or a compulsion to gamble). Establishing a mature balance between wants involves skills. Choice is also unlikely to bring satisfaction if taken on the basis of weak information. Markets often do not provide consumers with full and reliable information, for it is hard to exclude people from information and therefore to ensure payment for it, so its market supply is weakened. Instead, in a commerce-dominated society, one of the main types of information that adults get will be images that say the good life is obtained through high consumption of commodities; there is too little counteracting public information.

The issue of consumer sovereignty goes beyond whether choices are good for the chooser. Other people are affected. Some wants may thus be unacceptable, notably wants that bring harm to others, including even wants to harm others. Mainstream economists have unfortunately often taken a don’t-want-to-know approach to ethics in which they confuse acceptance of all wants with a value-neutral stance.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Businesspeople must deal with the rising price spiral. Higher costs must be absorbed or passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Management needs to adopt innovative responses to the problems of inflation and tight budgets. Inflation does not have a negative impact on all firms. Consumers are adapting to inflation, and businesses must make similar adaptations to remain in operation.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Webster’s says a concept is an idea or an abstract notion. Businesspeople use the term concept for the product promise, the customer proposition, and the real reason why people should buy. It is a stated relationship between product features (form of technology) and consumer benefits—a claim of proposed satisfactions. This promise is open to four interpretations:

The producer’s perception of the features of the new product.

The consumer’s perception of the features of the new product.

The producer’s estimate of the benefits delivered by that set of features.

The consumer’s estimate of the benefits delivered by that set of features.

These are only forecasts, guesses, at this time—not reality, even with a prototype in hand. They rest on expectations.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Environment is the sum of all the forces surrounding and influencing the life and development of the firm. The forces themselves can be classified as external or internal. Management has no direct control over them, though it can exert influences. The external forces are commonly called uncontrollable forces and consist of the following:

Competitive: kinds and numbers of competitors, their locations, and their activities.

Distributive: national and international agencies available for distributing goods and services.

Economic: variables (such as GNP, unit labor cost, and personal consumption expenditure) that influence a firm’s ability to do business.

Socio-economic: characteristics and distribution of the human population.

Financial: variables such as interest rates, inflation rates, and taxation.

Legal: the many kinds of foreign and domestic laws by which international firms must operate.

Physical: elements of nature such as topography, climate, and natural resources.

Political: elements of nations’ political climates such as nationalism, forms of government, and international organizations.

Socio-cultural: elements of culture (such as attitudes, beliefs, and opinions) important to international businesspeople.

Labor: consumption, skills, and attitudes of labor.

Technological: the technical skills and equipment that affects how resources are converted to products.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Businesspeople are bombardedwith masses of information, and at one time or another, everyone in business relies on someone else’s summary of a situation, publication, or document. To write a summary, gather the information (whether by reading, talking with others, or observing circumstances), organize that information, and then present it in your own words. Although many pople assume that summarizing is a simple skill, it’s actually more complex than it appears. A well written summary has at least three characteristics..

First, as in writing any business document, be sure the content is accurate. If you’re summarizing a report or a group of reports, make sure you present the information without error. Check your references, and then check for typos.

Second, make your summary comprehensive and balanced. The purpose of writing your summary is usually to help colleagues or supervisors make a decision, so include all the information necessary for your readers to understand the situation, problem, or proposal. If the issue you’re summarizing has more than one side, present all sides fairly and equitably. Make sure you include all the information necessary. Even though summaries are intended to be as brief as possible, your readers need a minimum amount of information to grasp the issue being presented.

Third, make your sentence structure clear, and include good transitions. The only way your summary will save anyone’s time is if your sentences are uncluttered, use well-chosen words, and proceed logically. Then, to help your readers move from one point to the next, your transitions must be just as clear and logical. Basically, when writing your summary be sure to cut through the clutter. Identify those ideas that belong together, and organize them in a way that’s easy to understand.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

When questioning your target audience, it might help to list some of the basic needs people have, and ask them to make check marks by those that pushed their particular buttons. Most people will react to one or more of the following basic needs (known as “appeals” in advertising lingo):

Convenience

Comfort

Love

Friendship

Security

Style

Social approval (status)

Health and well-being

Profit

Savings or economy

If you have had the feeling that people patronize you because you offer convenience and economy, you may be surprised to learn, via your questionnaires, that they really give you their business because your work adds to their sense of security.

You can engage in more free research by conscientiously studying the other advertising that is going on in your community—not only that of your competitors but that of everyone else as well. Have frank conversations with your customers. Talk with your competitors. Talk with other businesspeople in your community. You’ll find that their sources will provide you with useful information and won’t charge you one cent for it. Research can help you save a lot of money and earn a lot of money. For research can help you save and earn even more.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight